Whitey Holding Back Minorities?

The face of the city is changing and as whites become a minority you would think that diverse leadership would be driven by the non-whites......is it possible that the reason you don't see more diverse leadership is because of the racial differences among the non-white groups.

Making T.O. a truly DiverseCity
Royson James

As chief executive officer of YWCA Canada, Paulette Senior attends many events where the city's movers and shakers exercise their power. She's on several boards. She knows how to squeeze the flesh. And she's one of a lonely breed of leaders – visible minorities who make up nearly half of Toronto's population but are nearly invisible in the halls of power.

"We're still in the position of being the only one," Senior tells the Star at Thursday's launch of an initiative to help Toronto live up to its boast of being one of the world's most diverse cities.

"I'm tired of being special," she sighs, and proceeds to talk about the stress and heavy toll on the too few visible minorities holding down top-level leadership roles.

The Maytree Foundation and the City Summit Alliance, leaders in the effort to build a more competitive, just and equitable GTA, are impatient with the glacial pace at which the GTA's leadership landscape is evolving.

On Thursday, they launched DiverseCity – an initiative to "change the face of leadership in Toronto."

"We have an impatience for change," said Ratna Omidvar, president of Maytree. "We can't afford to wait," she told about 200 people at the Sutton Place Hotel, calling for "relentless incrementalism."

By waiting, the GTA is losing its chance to be more competitive and is also losing face with its growing non-white population, who feel a "disconnect" when they don't see their own faces reflected among the city-region's leaders.

DiverseCity released a study by the Conference Board of Canada that shows we may be throwing away a huge competitive advantage by not fully using the skills, knowledge, creative abilities and energies of the largest-growing segment of our population.

Companies that embrace, not just tolerate, diversity perform better in a world that is increasingly multi-everything.

DiverseCity has set itself an ambitious target by 2010:

• Create a speaker series, Nexus, that will see 300 senior level executives make new contacts across racial and ethnic groups.
• Identify and equip 75 "next-generation leaders" to address the city's top issues with its leaders.
• Facilitate appointing 500 leaders from under-represented groups to city agencies, boards and commissions.
• Uncover 300 new voices from diverse communities who can speak to media on a variety of issues.
• Prepare 90 diverse people to run for political office or run political campaigns.

Did you know that, in the 175-year history of Toronto City Council and the former Metro Council, spanning more than a thousand elected positions (192 since amalgamation alone), we've elected only a dozen non-whites?

It's tempting to argue political leadership should be colour-blind and culture-neutral. But ask any MP, MPP or councillor of ethnic origin, Sikh or Portuguese, Ukrainian or Jewish or black, how they are viewed in their community.

Ex-MPP Alvin Curling may have been elected to serve the northeast end of Scarborough, but blacks across the GTA and province called on him to represent the government at functions. Politicians of other ethnic and cultural backgrounds report a similar dynamic.

"We have a diversity deficit," said David Pecaut, the dynamo at the core of so many efforts to improve Toronto as a civil society. "We can turn it to a diversity dividend."

Contact Sangeeta Subramanian (ssubramanian@maytree.com), the talent scout and match-maker for this initiative.